Donatella Cinelli Colombini recensisce Sex and the Wine

The most entertaining book about wine that I’ve ever read: Sex and the wine, byFrancesca Negri (Curcu & Genovese 12 euros). A photographic record of the new fashionable and rule breaking women consumers

Sex and the Wine by Francesca Negri

The key revelation in the book is that with wine: “we can experience it and it gives us pleasure in the same way as a man gives us pleasure”. The female wine lovers are looking for good bottles of wine to satisfy their needs for excitement, for the intrigue which they feel when meeting someone for the first time and for the exaltation of good food. In describing good wine, the book explains that – “we want the wine to tell us a story, like when we meet a man for the first time and we learn about him and he learns about us, no matter if it is his story or your own, what is important is that the story is full of passion”.

In reality, Francesca Negri has a solid background in the history of wine, it’s culture, she is an expert in it’s taste and aroma, in the techniques of wine production and the characteristics of the different types of wines, what makes her different from many authors is that, just like many women, she speaks without arrogance “One does not need to pretend to know everything about wine, however when men are talking about wine, they feel compelled to give the impression that they know everything”. In short, women experts in wine to the rescue!

All the people mentioned in the book are easily identifiable: Edmundo Rovelli food and wine critic is of course Edward Raspelli, Jo Cork from the Wine Spectator is in reality Jo Cooke, but who is Philip Arca “owner of one of the most well known Tuscan Brunello wine producers”, obviously with direct links to WS?

Finally, two more lines about Francesca Negri, an emerging National food and wine author: she is an excellent writer, a great person, who is in love with life, she is unconventional, she is intuitive and has an ability to arouse interest, I will describe her with one word that initially seems trivial but in reality is a great compliment: she is ‘new’.